The Good

The CSC is a large course filled with enough material to learn and memorize to make an elephant run in fear.  The way that I like to learn is by actually practicing the concepts.  CSC Check is great for that.  Every chapter in the CSC has a corresponding domain module in the CSC Check with several practice questions.  These are great to run through as you struggle to understand the concepts presented in the CSC.  This is the place where you can identify what you truly do understand and areas that you likely should re-read.  If you’re already taking the CSC, then these quizzes will look familiar – they are the built the same as the CSC quizzes.  They are timed, but there is no time limit.  The way that I studied was to take each domain quiz as I completed each chapter, I didn’t worry about the timer, and I used the CSC textbook as a reference.  So, in my case they really weren’t quizzes but more assignments for practice.

The next level of testing is the Knowledge Assessment Tool.  The CSC is divided into sections and further subdivided into chapters.  Where the Domain Quizzes test individual chapters, the Knowledge Assessment Tool tests an entire section.  Again, they are timed, but there is no time limit.  Again, I did not concern myself too much with the timer and it was still open book, but this time any question that required me to open the CSC was marked as something that I needed more practice on.

The third and final level is the Exam mode.  This time you get 100 questions covering one book of the entire course and two hours to complete it.  This is to simulate the exam and get you prepared – an excellent preparation for T day.  The CSC Check test bank contains a few hundred questions that are inserted pseudo-randomly, based upon the weighting of the CSC.  That is, the exam mode knows how many questions of each topic to include based upon how many will be on the real CSC exam, and then randomly selects enough of each domain.

The large test bank is what I valued the most as it allowed me far more practice than answering the exact same questions over and over.  It means that you don’t have a limited number of exams to practice on.  This is where I got the most practice and built my confidence.

The Bad

The questions generally provide you with some level of explanation of the answer and where references to where it can be found in the CSC.  However, I found that the explanations should be more in depth.  Pointing me to a chapter in the CSC is not good enough… I know what chapter the question is from and likely didn’t understand it well there.  I got the question wrong and I want to know why.  There is no discussion board (although, one might assume that you are likely enrolled in the CSC, so you could use that discussion board).

Although the test bank has several hundred questions they are randomly placed in the exam mode.  Therefore, after your first trial run you will run into questions that you have already completed.  That means the only real exam simulation is the first one that you write.  After that you will run into questions that you’ve just answered, which will allow you to go quicker than you would on the exam.

Another downside is that I’m quite sure that they reuse questions between the quizzes in the CSC and CSC Check.  They may change names or numbers but use the exact same wording.  While the practice is still valuable, the real exam is going to ask questions in a completely different way.

If you are writing the CSC using the paper and pencil method (they now offer computer-based testing) then the CSC Check will not be a completely realistic simulation.  Not a biggie, but something to keep in mind.

The biggest detraction is the price.  Looking it up now it appears to be $120!  Come on folks at CSI, you can buy massive GMAT test prep books with thousands of questions for $20-30, and each exam is completely different.

The Bottom Line

If you are shelling out to take the CSC then you want all the practice you can get.  The CSC Check is a great way to do that, and it is cheaper than the cost of an additional attempt at writing the real exam.  I think that it helped me out.  I’ll never know what I would have scored if I didn’t use the CSC Check, but I do know that I passed with honours by using it.

The CSI may occasionally offer some sort of a discount on the CSC Check, at least that’s why I bought it at the time.  Since my biggest objection with the course is the price, the discount certainly helped sway me to buy it.

Not sure about the Canadian Securities Course?  Check out my review on it, here

First I’ll start by explaining  What ‘your number’ is; well it seems to be based off of Michael Mastersons’ Seven Years to Seven Figures‘ book (a decent book, by the way, I should really review it sometime) where you determine what level of lifestyle that you’d be comfortable with.  You then calculate how much that lifestyle will cost you annually and what date you would like to be financially free.  Once you know your financial freedom date and your annual lifestyle cost it is easy to determine how much money you will need to attain financial freedom.

That is Your Number (well, really it is two numbers;  how much and when).

ShareYourNumber is a social network where you go to publicly declare ‘your number.’  After you’ve shared your number the community is there to help you get there.  Forum discussions, blog posts different groups that you can join, etc.  Seems to me to be sort of similar to a personal finance blog directory.

The Good
The best part of the whole exercise is that it forces you to sit down and consider what your life’s purpose is.  From there it is a matter of setting one giant SMART goal, i.e., your number and when you will achieve it.

The second good point is that this is a community of like-minded individuals all located in the same place.  Everybody gets their own space, you can blog join discussions, etc.

The Bad
This site it confusing, in fact it is not really one site att all but a collection of sites.  While trying to find information I was redirected (from ShareYourNumber) to ning, kickapps, ShareYourNumber.org and several subdomains under ShareYourNumber.com.  I’m guessing this started as a ning community before  eveloving into a space of its own.

The Summary
This social network is a great idea to get people to publicly announce their goals – which I’ve read is the most important thing is setting the goal because then it becomes an accountability.  It is also a community so you can lean on others to help you along or provide your own advice.

If you are already a blogger on this subject then I’m not sure if this is the site for you (other than promoting your own space).  Bloggers tend to build their own communities plus they are generally the masters of their own domain.  There are plenty of ads on ShareYourNumber but, I’m sure, none belong to the members.

All in all, I love the idea but am lacklustre on the implementation.  If anyone has signed up and is using it then I would love to hear your comments.

The Canadian Securities Institute (CSI) is an educator to the financial world and the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) is an introductory, and probably the most well-known of the CSI courses. From the website:

“The CSC is recognized as the benchmark in the financial services industry and delivers the knowledge and skills employers demand…

The CSC is basically a broad discussion of the entire financial sector jammed into a few hundred pages of text. They attempt to give the students a solid grasp (albeit at a beginner level) of a variety of topics: the economy, regulations, corporation financing, fixed income and equities instruments, derivatives, mutual and hedge funds, portfolio planning, …

The course not only comes with a textbook but also some online learning aids. There are forums/chat rooms where you can ask other students and CSI staff questions and the responses are often well answered. There are also videos, exercises, quizzes, and games all to further your understanding of the topics.

The Good:

The content is well written and does provide a good (general) understanding of a wide array of topics. It is a one year course but I found that I was able to burn through it in a few months of fairly leisurely reading (although I hadn’t spent much time reading anything else). Some of the online activities were useful in reinforcing the concepts.

The CSC cost does qualify as a tax credit.

Upon successful completion of this course you are almost qualified to sell mutual funds.  I believe that one would still have to complete the Conduct and Practices exam as well.

The Bad:

The course may be started at any time, however the CSI seems to publish the books in May and the exams are based on the recent content. So the content sometimes lags current legislation and thus you are expected to know (for the exams) what is in the text even if in the real life you need to practice something else.

The online content is often typical of Computer Based Training. I have found that most CBTs are too light on pushing the student to understand and are overly simplistic (matching games, multiple guess, crossword puzzles). Whereas the exam preparation section itself contains subtle things that were briefly mentioned in the text but never in the CBT.

The course is currently costs $880! That’s a lot of dough to shell out for those of us just interested in the material.  Upon successful completion of this course you are almost qualified to sell mutual funds.  While the content in here is good and covers a lot, I’m not sure that I would trust buying a product from someone who only has this course under their belt.

The Summary:

If you are going into the financial services sector then you’ll be doing this course anyway, you don’t need my opinion.  However, if you are a novice investor then this might be worth your time.  I personally found that there was too much emphasis on things like how the Self-Regulated Organizations operate and not enough about how to analyze the financial instruments themselves.

The CBT portion alone, while helpful, is certainly not worth the tuition.  If you can find a copy of the text somewhere it is well worth an investors time to go through it.  So I only recommend this course if you are serious about taking control of your own finances or are going into a financial career.  If you are an investor who just wants to understand what their financial planner is telling them then I’m sure there are plenty of good library books.

This book is fairly easy to read for any lay person just starting out. The logical layout starts with a fundamental overview of what investing is. The topics talk about many forms of investment (debt, equity, real estate, derivatives) which is refreshing given the usual focus on stocks (or more recently, real estate).

After a brief overview this Dummies book goes into further details about building a plan, the various security instruments and even a section on building a business. There are plenty of resources and insight into the evaluation of different investments. All of this wrapped up into a little more 400 pages (including pictures:)).

Looking back on it now I am a little disappointed that there is only one short mention of technical analysis. That one reference serves as only a warning to folks about technicians trying to swindle you out of your cash – this is far from fair. Whether you buy in to the belief of technical analysis or not it is at least worth a honest introduction. (As an aside, The Canadian Securities Course contains a chapter on this type of analysis and the CSI even offers a whole course on charting).

This is certainly not a one-stop info warehouse. It does contain considerable information across various areas. However the serious investor will still need to learn more about their areas of interest.

Unlike many other books by charismatic authors that can get a reader interested in investing but unsure of where to begin, this book at least discusses various investing topics. All in all, for someone who is interested in personal finance but does not know where to begin consider this Dummies book it is a great book for the investing novice.

For posterity sake I’m going to review my experience. Here is the summary of the important this that I learned:
* A house buyer does not need to get a mortgage from a bank, conversely any Average Joe can provide financing (hmm, I wonder what effect they’ve seen with this subprime mess).
* You can buy a dump and fairly cheaply improve its “curb appeal” for a profit.
* Slick salesmen are everywhere trying to separate you from your money.

I never did get a chance to meet Mr Whitney. He showed up at neither the one hour sales pitch, nor the three day seminar. For all that I know Russ Whitney is a puppet they use on the infomercials. Instead there were these guys who talked about how great the Russ Whitney system is. I’ve no idea if these folks were real estate moguls or not, although they claimed to be, I don’t recall seeing any confirmation that they actually made any money on this (besides my tuition for the seminar of course). But even if they didn’t… those who can do and those who can’t teach, so I’ll let it go.

The class itself was enlightening for a non-finance techhie geek like myself who has never been anywhere. I learnt about offshore banking and covering your ASSets. I learnt that you should hire the best lawyer and accountant that you can find. But what did I actually learn about real estate?…
*Look for motivated sellers.
*Try to convince the seller to finance the property for you AND while you’re at it convince them that they don’t need a down payment.

Yes, I think I did learn more that that. It opened my eyes up to various concepts of renting, leasing, financing. I absorbed some ideas about how to cheaply improve a house’s market value. And I did use some of these tips, I have made money on every house that I have ever bought. However, I have been buying and selling houses during one of the longest sellers markets on record.

But over the course of three days, the amount that was actually taught probably could have fit into a much shorter (and cheaper?) seminar. However, they had to make sure that they left enough time to sell their next level of seminars (for the low, low price of … your first born child).  He also offered some type of mentorship program; mentors are great to have so, perhaps, this would have been the crown jewel in the program.

Seriously, I love learning. I do not regret taking this course as I learnt a great deal. The problem is that what I learnt was for more than what they taught. Of what they taught I probably could have picked up at my library.

If you have any interest in signing up for his seminars I recommend that you first read his book. Building Wealth, From Rags to Riches Through the Ages is quite easy to read and will provide you some ideas for real estate investing… and you’ll save yourself from the time and money of a seminar – at least until you’re sure that you want to.  Until then, join real estate investors communities… perhaps you can find a mentor there.